A computer mouse provides a man-machine interface between a computer and a user. Conventionally, a computer mouse controls and moves a cursor in a two-dimensional space defined on a computer display. In other words, the cursor is controlled by the mouser to move in X- and Y-dimension. This suits most computer applications. However, there are cases that require the cursor to move in a third dimension, such as Z-dimension or to control another parameter rather than X- and Y-displacement, such as moving speed of article or magnitude of a force applied to an article in a computer game or width of lines in a computer drawing application.
In order to provide the third-dimensional control of a computer mouse, a joystick is added to the computer mouse. The Joystick is movable by a user of the mouse in a forward-backward direction representing increase and decrease of the parameter associated with and defined by the third dimension. Due to limitation imposed on by physical size of a computer mouse, the joystick has to be short. This kind of short joystick is difficult to operate. Sometimes, undesired movement of the mouse may be induced due to the operation of the joystick.
It is thus desired to have a multi-dimensional computer mouse which allows an efficient control of a third dimension of a computer application.